The Rise of Women’s Sports

In middle and high school, I dreamed of being good at sports. I liked the competition and wanted to be a valued part of the team. But my lack of coordination guaranteed me a permanent seat on the bench — if I made the team at all. I transferred my sports ambitions to the protagonist of my adult novel, a basketball star in high school who Cornell University admitted despite a middling academic record. I wouldn’t call this character a Mary Sue — a superhuman character reflecting wish fulfillment on the part of the author — because of her otherwise abysmal lapses in judgement. However, Sandy lives out my dream of being the one in the game, making the buzzer-beating 3-pointer. And as a teacher and coach after graduating from Cornell (and flunking out of graduate school), she comes to realize the importance of letting everyone play:

How many times in her school career had she stood at the sideline with the ball, waiting for the referee’s whistle so she could make the inbound pass, and from behind listened to the tiny, pleading voice of another girl, “Coach, please put me in?”

Dirt Cheap was my last book that featured a young woman athlete, and in the next one, Gringolandia, Courtney was more like me — standing stiffly on the volleyball court “while balls smacked her in the face.” My girl protagonists in Rogue, Torch, and Eyes Open have other interests, mostly film/video and music. I’m starting to work on a new project, though, that has a basketball-playing lead, inspired in part by the rise in women’s basketball at the collegiate and professional level and the enthusiasm surrounding Caitlin Clark.

I had the opportunity to see Clark in person this summer when the Indiana Fever showed up in Brooklyn to take on the New York Liberty. I also like the Liberty, so I figured I’d be a winner no matter how the game turned out. Unfortunately, Clark did not play well due to a cold that had turned into an ear infection and sat on the bench most of the second half looking sick and glum. One can’t deny, though, that she’s a generational talent and despite a slow beginning has proven to be an asset to her team and the sport. Last night she set the WNBA record for most assists in a season (not just rookies, but everybody), no doubt helped by the fact that other teams have to double-team this dangerous shooter from anywhere in the half-court.

Many people were disappointed when Clark wasn’t chosen for the USA women’s basketball team at the 2024 Summer Olympics. I agree with the coach’s decision to select older players who would not get a chance in four years, players like Diana Taurasi, the subject of one of the biographies in the She Persisted series. The USA women went on to win the gold medal, and were one of 26 women’s teams and individuals to take the gold. In all, Team USA’s women athletes won 65% of the country’s gold medals and 69 of 126 medals overall. Given that six medals were won in mixed events, the stats for the USA women athletes are especially impressive.

Why did the USA women athletes do so well in these international competitions? I don’t think many other countries had this level of women’s achievement in the Olympics. And it wasn’t always this way. The passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 meant that, for the first time, girls and women’s sports began to receive equal funding and support. This equal funding invited new players into the sport and gave them the facilities, equipment, and scholarships they needed to raise their level.

Other societal changes during the 1970s also encouraged and enhanced the potential of women athletes. The fact that women could have reproductive choice and equal access to housing and financial assets gave them the freedom and independence to pursue their dreams. In the 1960s and before, girls played half-court rather than full-court basketball, with three guards and three forwards prohibited from crossing the middle line. The reason given was that running up and down the full court would damage their reproductive organs, and what were women worth in those days besides having children? My mother-in-law, who was fairly decent at sports, chafed against those restrictions but ended up quitting basketball in high school because the games were slow and boring.

I’ve always been drawn to basketball despite my lack of athletic prowess, but I’ve recently become a fan of women’s soccer and tennis. I fell in love with soccer after living in Portugal and appreciate the attention being given to the women’s teams. Yes, maybe it’s only because they win, but Title IX has had a huge impact on women’s soccer in the US, whereas in other countries, women continue to struggle to attain anything close to parity. And my son, Derrick, is a huge tennis fan who last year had his picture taken with longtime favorite player Novak Djoković. His strategy has been to choose unpopular players from unpopular countries with the goal of avoiding the crowd for chances to see his guy.

Because tennis is an individual sport (and one in which I was especially terrible growing up), I’m more likely to pick players if I connect with them and their stories. For the first time ever, I attended the US Open in Flushing, Queens this year. In fact, I was there three times — once for the free fan week where I saw players practice, once for the women’s finals fan day to see players warm up and the championship match on the big screen, and once to see a match with my favorite player, Poland’s Iga Świątek, against another player on my top 5 list, Jessica Pegula. (Occupying places 2-4 on the list, by the way, are Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, and Barbora Krejcíková.)

Unfortunately, as in the case of Caitlin Clark, my favorite player was ailing and not up to her usual form; she lost in that quarterfinal match to Pegula. But I do like Pegula as well, and I have a really nice, though far away, photo of her practicing before the main draw of the tournament. Her practice partner was Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko, who would go on to win the women’s doubles final with the Ukrainian doubles specialist Lyudmyla Kichenok.

I look forward to watching the upcoming WNBA finals, where Clark has taken a formerly last-place team to the playoffs for the first time in a while.  And getting back to my girls’ sports book. If you watch women’s sports, who are your favorites?